Posts Tagged ‘authentic’

Dinner at our place, hanging out by the fire, let’s do lunch, a drink after work: these are often some of the sweetest times in our days. Sometimes they are planned and other times spontaneous. Sometimes they are quiet and sometimes raucous. Sometimes they are for serious conversations and sometimes they are for letting go.

What if we made these kinds of gatherings an intentional practice? Intentional in the sense of meeting regularly, at an agreed upon time, for an agreed upon duration, with an agreed upon purpose. What if we committed to each other to keep showing up? That we wouldn’t leave the group for a specified period of time, at least long enough to experience the best and the worst of each other. In these gatherings, we could practice being in authentic relationship with each other with our whole selves.

Many people involved in social purpose work champion the idea that organizations need to become places where we can relate to each other not just as roles but as whole human beings. We believe that when we are free to express dimensions of ourselves that don’t fit neatly into job descriptions, our work becomes more engaging and our relationships more authentic.

I think this is true. But what is less well understood is that treating each other as the patchwork, unruly human beings we are, rather than the zippered office functionaries we pretend to be, is also the only way we can really come to understand, let alone affect, the larger institutional patterns we are trying to change. Read More »